Murder Princess (anime OVA), via Hulu

 This OVA is short, so I've written a fairly complete synopsis, which means there are spoilers. I suppose I should feel guilty about that, since I said I'd try to cut back on them, but I don't. Trust me, if you ever had any urge to see this show, you're better off just reading spoilers and leaving it be. It's not the worst thing I've ever seen, but it rates a "meh" or "this kind of sucks" in enough areas that it's not really worth the two and half hours it takes to watch it.

I really don't want my motto to become "I watch/read this stuff so you don't have to," but it's hard for me to quit something once I've started it...

Synopsis:

Princess Alita barely manages to escape the traitor who has stormed her family's castle and killed her father and her friend/lady's maid. In the process of escaping, she encounters a female bounty hunter. The two of them fall off a cliff, and the simultaneous near-death experience causes them to switch souls. Alita, now in the bounty hunter's body, enlists the help of the bounty hunter to take her family's castle back. The bounty hunter, Falis, agrees, but only because she'd like to get paid and she'd like her body back (pretty much in that order).

After taking back the castle, Falis has to pretend to be Alita and assume the throne until Alita's brother comes back from peace talks in another country. Alita assumes the role of her lady's maid, even taking her former lady's maid's name, Milano. The new Alita doesn't know how to behave like a royal, but she can slaughter monsters like it's nothing, so her people love her.

Alita's brother comes back, and everything seems wonderful, until he's revealed to be a scumbag traitor who's working with a sorceress to try to get hold of something called Te Oria. Te Oria is magic/technology that can grant a person any wish. It's a powerful thing left over from a previous era, when robots were everywhere and technology was so advanced it looked like magic - in fact, all the magic and fantasy creatures in this era are actually technology left over from the previous era.

Anyway, the sorceress and scumbag traitor kill the other traitor (you know, the one at the beginning who killed Alita's father) because he'd outlived his usefulness or something. The sorceress and the scumbag traitor are after Alita - or, more accurately, her body - because only she can access and use Te Oria, which is hidden in the castle. Instead of running far, far away, new Alita, Milano, and a few companions go back to the castle to...try to kill the sorceress, I think. Or maybe just to access Te Oria and use it to switch back to their own bodies. It doesn't go so well, and the scumbag traitor gains access to Te Oria and uses it to wish for the destruction of the world. Once Te Oria is started, the only thing that can stop it is for Alita (or rather her body) to turn it off, but doing so will cut the power it has been providing to all the things from the previous era, including Alita/Falis' comrades/friends. The comrades/friends are unafraid, so Alita and Milano shed some tears before Alita turns Te Oria off.

Because they didn't get a chance to wish themselves back into their own bodies, Alita must continue to be the princess, her bloody battling earning her the name "Murder Princess," and Milano presumably continues to be her lady's maid. The fate of the scumbag traitor isn't mentioned.